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It never ceases to amaze me that how in situations like this, the food choices available to you and the food choices that your mother would want you to pick seem to be pretty much diametrically opposed. It’s the bag of Cheezits that you find and consume, even though you’ve been at the bars and have defiantly had two or three more than you should have. It’s the fast food burger that you gobble down in three bites as you run for that meeting you’re late for and then pay dearly for with ominous belly gurgles for the next hour and a half. It’s food that, even under the best conditions, makes you feel like a huge, oil dipped slug not long after consuming and brings to mind vows of forswearing that sort of diet ever again. Once ingested, it will make you regret ever having ventured out that day at all. This was what we were looking at now, and though the quality looked better then grease burgers and Cheezits. It still had, “Bad Idea” written all over it.

The dining tent had been set up smack dab in between the field of Shuttle watchers, nestled into the damp grass like sleeping geese with blankets and the manicured paths and flowers that surrounded the collection of retired rockets of yore, and though my brain knew better, the smell from the warming trays was dangerously enticing. Whoever the caterers for the Kennedy Space Center are, they know how to lay out a spread. Meats and other sweet smelling dishes burbled over blue, lit Sterno canisters and sugary desserts looked back at us from hopeful piles. Soda, lemonades, potato chips and more stood by just at arms reach, all daring you to ingest them at two in the morning. You… who has barely slept at all in the last twenty-four hours. You, who are physically at the edge of your stamina and you, who has only recently been exposed to the germ rich, recirculated airplane air breathed by one hundred and fifty other individuals. We won’t even discuss that pepperoni pizza you ate last night…

…Or your not-eighteen-year-old-anymore stomach lining.

The place must have been hopping for a while at this point because the “just opened crush” that always seems to occur in the first hour of operations had dispersed, leaving the tent happily quiet except for a few hungry souls making their gastronomic decisions, for better or for ill.

I needed something safe. Something to warn my guts that there was more on the way later on and that they should muster the troops, but not anything that could turn things in an undesirable direction. Something mom would approve of.

Fruit! My savior!

Stuffed in a corner between the steak sandwich fillings and a mound of cream cheese danishes was a modest pile of apples, oranges and bananas. Thank God!

The trick was not only to feed my son and myself, but also to get Short Stack far away enough from the playground so that he might escape its gravitational pull. Though he had been sure that he needed rescuing only a few moments ago, the prospect of leaving the joyful, chaotic embrace of the Space Jungle Gym started to give him doubts and now he was rethinking the notion.

“Maybe…” He started to slowly scuttle sideways back toward the Fun Vortex like a crab. “I’ll just play for a little while longer…”

“Ah, no. We just got out of there, Buddy. Remember? Lets go do something else for a bit. We can come back again, I promise. What we need is something to eat.”

“But, DAAAAAD!”

I glanced at the food and immediately started to reassess my plan. Though I was hungry and no doubt, he was too, we would still be in full view of the object of his desire and the battle would only get harder. It was time for some safe nourishment and redirection.

If I have learned anything as a father, it’s that distraction is your friend.

“Hey, we still haven’t gotten to the gift shop! Lets grab a couple of these,” I pointed to the bananas “and go see what they have! I bet they have some really, REALLY amazing stuff!

He paused, mid scuttle. “Oh. Hmmmm.” You could almost see the visions of space toys drifting through his head as he gave this its due consideration.

“Okay.” He straightened up and took my hand. “Let’s go, Dad!” and with our new target acquired, we happily grabbed two of the bright yellow fruit, paid for them on the way out and strolled back across the tiny pedestrian bridge leading back to the shopping area, munching all the way. We had passed though here before when we arrived but I had been pushing him in the stroller and he had been only about one third awake. He was in high gear now and Short Stack wanted to see what wonderful sights there were to see…. and buy. The crowd was a very different one than I had observed a few hours earlier and it was comical in its unorthodox presentation. Here, two very different things were happening, and happening in abundance.

Shopping… and sleeping.

Everywhere you looked, there were space geeks in nirvana, living their dream. Joyful to be physically standing where their hearts live all the time and cramming the massive gift shops and attractions with their bodies and credit cards. For them, like my own son, the excitement was all consuming. Others, like discarded boosters, had run out their fuel, plummeted back to earth and lay where they fell. Even as the hoots and hollers of those still going strong filled the air, I was spotting more and more people whom had given up for the night and were seeking some form of rest, and they were doing it everywhere and anywhere without a hint of shame.

What looked to be a self respecting businessman, asleep on a bench. A fit young man in his twenties, curled up on a tabletop in the fetal position, his arm tucked under his head and his jacket used as a blanket. A whole family, Dad, Mom and two kids, out cold in the grass, all nestled together like a small heard of deer beaded down for the night. It was as if a wave of tsetse flies and gone through the place and half the people had been knocked down with sleeping sickness. Individuals whom you never would expect to crash so publicly seemed to have said, “Aw Hell, this will do” and pulled up any patch of grass or unused, cleanish horizontal area and were sawing off zzzz’s with abandon. The only criteria seemed to be that it was out of the way of foot traffic. The most entertaining display of this we spotted was in an actual display window. As we walked up to the gift shop front doors, my son pointed out what surely wasn’t intended to be there when the employees put out the items that were for sale tonight.

“Look at that, Dad!” He had stopped short and I followed his gaze to what had made him pause in bemusement just a meter or two from the shop door. There, in the front window, nestled beneath the halogen lights and shirt displays was a girl, no more than thirteen or so. Her backpack doubling as pillow, she had found her spot to spend a few hours tonight. All I can guess is that she must have spotted the plush, unwalked on carpeting normally reserved for Space Swag display and thought, “Aw Hell, this will do.” She was out cold and oblivious to the smirks of adults and amazed eyes of young children. There was defiantly a group wide lowering of personal barriers and embarrassment thresholds going on here. The need for sleep will eventually do that to people and though I know this, I had never witnessed it before outside the confines of an airport departure gate before.

The interesting thing, I realized, was that even as I watched adults and teenagers give up the fight and practically fall over where they stood, it was the little kids, the ones whom we force to take naps and go to bed at a decent hour, the ones whom we insist need to get their sleep, THEY were almost universally going strong. As I cast my gaze around at the people stretched out flat here and there, I became more and more sure. Not a little kid asleep to be seen anywhere. They were all up and running.

Mostly, I noted, toward the area where the playground was located.

It was time to do some quick poking about and get back to the food tent followed, hopefully, by some rest. My brain was starting to feel fuzzy and even if Short Stack looked as chipper as a chipmunk, I knew what his batteries wouldn’t, in fact, last forever. I also knew that I was going to need to crash in an hour or so even if he didn’t feel like it and when that time came, I wanted it to be on my terms rather than having his dad unexpectedly keel over into the azaleas and start snoring.

We started to poke around for souvenirs to commemorate our trip together and even though it was past two in the morning, the shop was still surprisingly active. Amazingly active, actually. Enough so that I felt more than a little crowed as we checked out what the Space Center had to offer in the way of posters, toys, patches and shirts. I lost sight of Short Stack more than once as people bustled through the racks looking for their own keepsakes and I started to feel uneasy at the idea of trying to keep track of my son and simultaneously make a wise purchasing decision. It was simply too much for my mushy brain to cope with at this point.

“Hey, Short Stack.” He had gone back to look at the sleeping window girl again for the fourth or fifth time and at my call, came trotting back to me with a look of entertaining puzzlement about his slumbering discovery. “It’s just too crowded in here right now. Let’s go back, get some dinner and then head to our tent. We’ll come back in the morning when it’s not so crazy in here.”